Water shrew

1. Any one of several species of shrews having fringed feet and capable of swimming actively. The two common European species (Crossopus fodiens, and C. ciliatus) are the best known. The most common American water shrew, or marsh shrew (Neosorex palustris), is rarely seen, owing to its nocturnal habits.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.